Dogen Zenji Quotes

I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself.

Live contemplating the body. Contemplate internally and externally. Contemplate the origination of things in the body. Contemplate the dissolution of things in the body.

Self-inquiry is the process and the goal also. 'I am' is the goal and the final reality. To hold to it with effort is self-inquiry. When spontaneous and natural it is realization.

We do. Or re-create the ones we have, and project. My whole life is projection.

The affairs of the world will go on forever. Do not delay the practice of meditation.

Life is but thought.

People aren't interested in seeing themselves as they really are.

I think the perception of peace is what distracts most people from really having it.

Keep your head on your shoulders - even when you think your head is on your shoulders, sometimes it isn't!

To meditate is to observe yourself, for you are totally responsible for your body, mind, thought.

How can anyone see straight when he does not see himself and the darkness he unconsciously carries with him into all his dealings?

What we call "I" is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.

Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.

A [wo]man who is unconscious of [her/]himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour.

Self knowledge is always bad news.

It is not a question of sitting silently, it is not a question of chanting a mantra. It is a question of understanding the subtle workings of the mind. As you understand those workings of the mind a great awareness arises in you, which is not of the mind. That awareness arises in your being, in your soul, in your consciousness.

Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.

The secret of zen is just two words: not... always... so.

Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.

I think that all the spiritual training is just to be able to allow you to experience this from a slightly different perspective - one that's a little more stabilized.

Little mirrors were attached to the front of their cars, at which they glanced to see where they had been; then they stared ahead again. I had thought that only beetles had this delusion of Progress.

First, meditation should be of a negative nature. Think away everything. Analyse everything that comes in the mind by the sheer action of the will. Next, assert what we really are-existence, knowledge, and bliss-being, knowing, and loving.

It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, ''Know thyself,'' and too often leads to a self- estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.